Why Alibaba Fell Hard on Friday

Shares of Chinese e-commerce, payments, and cloud giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) fell 5% Friday after a positive session Thursday that followed the delivery of better-than-feared quarterly results.

Tech stocks broadly struggled Friday after the Labor Department released a July jobs report showing that the U.S. labor market is still red hot, sparking renewed fears that the Federal Reserve will enact more aggressive hikes to the benchmark federal funds rate. Higher interest rates could also strengthen the dollar further, especially relative to the Chinese yuan, since China's economy is struggling right now. A stronger dollar would decrease the value of Alibaba's earnings in dollar terms, so it's perhaps no surprise the company's U.S.-listed shares gave back some of Thursday's gains.

Meanwhile, heightened geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China emerged this week and worsened on Friday, which likely didn't help matters.

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Source Fool.com